To know me is to know my dogs. They are my family. They are my constant companions at home or on the road in my Eurovan, which should be named Dog House 2.
Dog House 1, a Rialta that looked like a stretched version of the Eurovan, finally died a few years ago after several expensive illnesses. What do you do when you finally get rid of a money pit? Obviously, you buy something as similar as possible.
But back to my pups. My two original English Cocker Spaniels, acquired in part to test what shared parenting with my then partner would look like, were followed by two rescues. Having children didn’t work out and neither did the guy. It turns out that sometimes a 50-50 promise looks a lot more like 95-5. I couldn’t have pulled that off on the kid front, but I’ve managed just fine with multiple dogs.
These days, I have Misha, a 5-year-old Aussie mix who was part of an 11-puppy rescue litter from Fresno, and 2-year-old Moke, my third English Cocker Spaniel since I just cannot resist their relentless, happy tail wagging. In addition, my rescue pup’s sister, Harley, who belongs to a close friend, often comes to dog camp, as we call it.
In short, even though my original four pups have passed, there is still plenty of dogging going on in my life. So, you would think I would be an awesome dog trainer. You would be wrong. A brief stint of working with a professional dog trainer has improved things on a number of fronts. In addition, the pups are getting more mature which also helps, though not enough, especially on the barking front. And that drives me crazy.
A couple of months ago, Harley spent the week, which always intensifies the canine interactions and reactions. Translation: even more barking than usual. I knew I was going to have to do something. So, I went into my garage and pulled out the two bark collars that have been stored there in their unopened boxes for years, charged them up, made sure that only the sound and vibration features were turned on, and tried them out.
Talk about a game changer! The three pups traded off the two collars for less than seven hours over four days. The barking at the neighbors has almost stopped, even when their three pups are playing football or the shaggy six-month-old Griffon is taunting my guys by sauntering up to the fence and stretching, looking at them all the while.
In thinking about how any of this relates to writing, I realized that we are surrounded by incredibly useful writing tools, from Grammarly and ProWritingAid spelling and grammar checkers, to synonym finders, to my favorite set of alternative thesauruses that help with everything from imagery to structure. We just have to look around to find the tools we need, and then actually use them.
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